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The Foundation for Endangered Languages: Tenth Conference in association with the Central Institute of Indian Languages, Mysore, India. 25-27 October 2006. This year's conference concerns the effects of multilingualism on smaller languages.

The Foundation for Endangered Languages, in association with the Central Institute of Indian Languages, will hold its annual 2006 conference in India, home of more than a thousand languages and dialects, and a consciously multilingual policy stance by the Government of India. Although many of these languages enjoy political and economic patronage, others are struggling to survive. Among these strugglers are the languages of the Andaman and Nicobar Islands, where communities are not only tiny, but also some of the most anciently independent tribes on the planet. The viability of many such small languages is threatened.

This year's conference concerns the effects of multilingualism on smaller languages. A crucial question for this conference is how far poorly-conceived language planning policies may actually contribute to environmental imbalance and instability, dangers that are often very little understood. As we understand the effort to revitalize languages, this is no more than the support they need to develop in the face of new demands, including the increased bi- and multi-lingualism coming from globalization, urbanization and language contact. Some Issues for the Conference:

We hope to discuss these issues in terms of actual language situations presented by our participants.

- Are minority languages threatened, or strengthened, through bilingualism or multilingualism with other languages? Is it essential for the survival of a small language to sustain a minimum-sized core group of language-dominant speakers?

- What factors beside the prospect of competitive economic benefits can sustain language use in a community (and indeed re-orient the language planners)?

- Is bilingual language planning important for families based on cross-cultural/linguistic marriages? More generally, what role is there for language planners in the future of a small language or dialect? Is language survival helped or hindered by a flexible policy in recognizing what languages are actually in use?

- How significant are social networks for sustaining 'vital voices'? Does the context of a consciously multilingual society foster use of smaller languages? Is code-switching as common in small minority communities and tribes as it is in the elites?

- How compatible is western-style formal education with traditional language use? Are there other models for transmission?

- Are the prospects of minority languages affected by the metropolitan languages through which they may be known to a wider world?

- Does a language's vitality benefit if it is not closely related, or structurally similar, to its neighbours?

- Is language documentation the only feasible outside response to the needs of vital but vanishing voices?

- How can modern - often cheap - technology benefit the smallest languages?

'Vital Voices' refers to the growing awareness that the survival and development of endangered languages are necessary for humanity's future, however endangered they may look amidst the statistics generated for policy in our globalized economy. The Conference Venue

The Central Institute of Indian Languages, Mysore, (CIIL) was set up by the Government of India in July 1969. It is a large institute with seven regional centers spread all over India, and is engaged in research and training in Indian languages other than English and Hindi. It helps to evolve and implement India's language policy and coordinate the development of Indian languages. Mysore is a city in the Southern Indian state of Karnataka. The former capital of the princely state of Mysore, ruled by the Wodeyar dynasty since the 14th century, it is now the administrative seat of Mysore District, the second largest in Karnataka, 135 km from Bangalore, the state capital. The city is known for its palaces and many other attractions. One of these is the Brindavan Gardens laid out beside the Krishnarajasagar dam (19km), particularly beautiful at night. There are also the Royal Palace, the Chamundi Hills, Srirangapatnam Temple, Ranganthittu Bird Sanctuary, Oriental Research Institute, and Museums of Folklore, and of Art and Archeology. The conference dates (25-27 October) will allow participants, if they wish, to witness Diwali (the festival of lights) on 23 October before coming to Mysore. A language-related excursion is planned for 28-29 October after the conference.

Transport

Bus: Mysore has inter-city and sub-urban public bus transportation.

Rail: Mysore is connected to Bangalore to the northeast via Mandya, and to Hassan to the northwest, to Chamarajanagar via Nanjangud to the southeast.

Air: The nearest accessible airport is at Bangalore. Submission of Abstracts

If you would like to take part in our conference, please submit an abstract of your contribution. Abstracts should not exceed 500 words. They may be submitted in either of two ways: by electronic submission, or on paper. Most simply, they should be written in English. Other languages may also be accepted by prior arrangement with the Programme Chair Mahendra Verma mkv1york.ac.uk or FEL Chair Nicholas Ostler chibcha.demon.co.uk>

1) Electronic submission: Electronic submission (by 18 April 2006) should be as an attachment in Word, or simply as an email message to mkv1york.ac.uk, with copies to chibcha.demon.co.uk> and mallikarjunciil.stpmy.soft.net. Please fill in the subject domain as follows:

FEL_Abstract

The e-mail should also contain, in the following format:

NAME : Names of the author(s) AFFILIATION(S): Institution(s) where the author(s) currently work TITLE: Title of the paper EMAIL: Email address of the first author, if any ADDRESS: Postal address of the first author TEL: Telephone number of the first author, if any FAX: Fax number of the first author, if any

The name of the first author will be used in all correspondence.

Note. The Conference announcement will also be placed on the net by CIIL at www.ciil.org with facilities for submission, and a step-by-step method of submission that will automatically send copies of the abstract as above. Dr. B.Mallikarjun of CIIL, Mysore (Tel: +91-821-2345007) will be the local point of contact for participants.

2) Paper abstracts: Three copies should be sent (to arrive by 18 April 2006) to:

Dr Mahendra Verma Dept of Language and Linguistic Science University of York York YO10 5DD United Kingdom

fax +44 1904 432673

This should have a clear short title, but should not bear anything to identify the author(s).

On a separate sheet, please include the following information:

NAME: Names of the author(s) TITLE: Title of the paper EMAIL: Email address of the first author, if any ADDRESS: Postal address of the first author TEL: Telephone number of the first author, if any FAX: Fax number of the first author, if any The name of the first author will be used in all correspondence.

(If possible, please also send an e-mail to Mahendra Verma mkv1york.ac.uk informing him of the paper submission. This is in case the hard copy does not reach its destination in time. This e-mail should contain the information specified in the above section.) Important Notes for Authors

Oral presentations (except for any selected to be keynote addresses) will last twenty minutes each, with a further ten minutes for discussion. Authors will be expected to submit a written paper with the full version of the lecture (up to 8 pages A4), for publication in the proceedings, well in advance of the conference. Further details on the format of text will be specified to the authors. Authors (and other attendees) from outside India will also be required to inform the organizers in advance of the following details: Passport Number, Citizenship, Date and Place of Issue, for all who wish to be present during the conference. Important Dates

This workshop, the latest in a series that has been running successfully since 1990, aims at bringing together researchers interested in various aspects of the TAG formalism including relations to other grammar formalisms -- this is the reason for the '+' in the workshop's name. In the past, interaction between such formalisms has been productive, leading for example to the development of broad-coverage grammars, and to new insights into properties of different formalisms. Such related formalisms would include minimalist syntax, categorial grammar, dependency grammars, HPSG, LFG, and others which share with TAG general properties such as lexicalization of syntactic structure, a simple notion of local grammatical dependency, or mildly context sensitive generative capacity.

The Eighth International Workshop on Tree Adjoining Grammar and Related Formalisms (TAG+8)

endorsed by The Association for the Mathematics of Language (ACL SigMoL)

15-16 July 2006 Sydney, Australia

CALL FOR PAPERS

An important subfield of computational linguistics and natural language processing is research that centers around formal machinery for describing language. This covers a wide range of interdisciplinary work in the cognitive science of language, including the mathematical and algorithmic properties of this machinery, the grammatical description of natural language, and the mechanisms of human language use. The results of this research will often drive more applied and empirical areas such as efficient algorithms and models for machine learning.

Tree Adjoining Grammar (TAG) is a prominent formalism in the study of natural language because of its attractive formal properties and its extended domain of locality. TAG has been studied extensively in the last three decades with respect to both its mathematical properties and computational applications, as well as its role in constructing grammatical theories, models of language processing and applications.

This workshop, the latest in a series that has been running successfully since 1990, aims at bringing together researchers interested in various aspects of the TAG formalism including relations to other grammar formalisms -- this is the reason for the ''+'' in the workshop's name. In the past, interaction between such formalisms has been productive, leading for example to the development of broad-coverage grammars, and to new insights into properties of different formalisms. Such related formalisms would include minimalist syntax, categorial grammar, dependency grammars, HPSG, LFG, and others which share with TAG general properties such as lexicalization of syntactic structure, a simple notion of local grammatical dependency, or mildly context sensitive generative capacity.

Invited speakers:

* Mark Johnson, Brown University * TBA

We invite submissions on all aspects of TAG and related systems and anticipate holding sessions devoted to:

A key goal is thus to deepen knowledge of the formalisms that can be used to describe natural language; the intention is for this workshop to act as a forum for doing this, in the context of an increasing empirical focus in the fields of computational linguistics and natural language processing. Equally, however, it is a goal of the workshop to encourage the connection of formal results to this empirical work.

Anonymous abstracts may be submitted for two sorts of presentations at the workshop: spoken presentations and poster presentations. Poster presentations are particularly appropriate for brief descriptions of specialized implementations, resources under development and work in progress. Regardless of type of submission, abstracts may not exceed two pages in length (not including data, figures and references). All abstracts are to be submitted electronically using the ACL START conference submission system.

Proceedings including full papers for accepted abstracts (including both oral presentations and poster presentations) will be available on-line and at the workshop. In addition, we will explore possibilities for subsequent publication of workshop articles, for example through a special issue of a journal.

Organization:

Local Arrangements Chair

Mark Dras, Macquarie University

Program Committee

Tilman Becker (co-chair), DFKI Laura Kallmeyer (co-chair), University of Tuebingen Srinivas Bangalore, AT&T Research Eric de la Clergerie, INRIA Dan Flickinger, CSLI, Stanford University Robert Frank, Johns Hopkins University Akio Fujiyoshi, Ibaraki University Claire Gardent, LORIA Chung-Hye Han, Simon Fraser University Karin Harbusch, University of Koblenz Geert-Jan Kruijff, Charles University Vincenzo Lombardo, University of Turin David McDonald Martha Palmer, University of Colorado Owen Rambow, Columbia University Frank Richter, University of Tuebingen James Rogers, Earlham College Maribel Romero, University of Pennsylvania Anoop Sarkar, Simon Fraser University Giorgio Satta, University of Padua Stuart Shieber, Harvard College Mark Steedman, University of Edinburgh Matthew Stone, Rutgers University Yuka Tateisi, University of Tokyo David Weir, University of Sussex Vijay-Shanker, University of Delaware Naoki Yoshinaga, University of Tokyo